Mindless Ones

• The phantasmal Bat-Signal of Nolan’s films with it’s spooky overtones works, somewhat counter-intuitively, with a drive towards a more realistic Batman, both in the aesthetic sense in that it marries with new colouring techniques in the comics, capable of rendering more precisely the qualities of light, and in the conceptual sense: it’s more plausible than the erstwhile cone of light, and gestures in the direction of a Batman more constrained by a realistic set of rules. The symbol’s ambiguous presence can also work to stake out an ultra-noir view of the character, less superhero more urban myth. The citizens of Gotham don’t know who or what this Batman stands for, or what he is or even whether he’s actually real, in much the same way as they don’t know whether that light does in fact constitute a signal or whether it’s, in line with the official explanation given in Nolan’s films, just the product of faulty equipment. This Batman is inherently mysterious, a creature of the shadows, someone (something?) to be unsure of. This isn’t a Batman who has much use for the golden chest emblem.

More chat about Bob Kane’s golden phallus after the jump

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

Andrew and Steven in

KNIGHTS OF THE REALM

Part 6

The book Dream Date by Tim Leopard and Fraser Geesin is available from Running Water Press or from Amazon.

In anticipation of this week’s UK release of Prison Pit Book Two, the follow up to Johnny Ryan’s psychopathically nasty but much-loved and lauded 2009 bio-carnage fightfest, let’s take a closer look at one of the many striking and remarkable panels we were so luckily and unapologetically offered by Book One.

Click to enlarge, and then again to go close-up – it looks great all blown-up and backlit.

Yeah yeah, so he’s called Cannibal Fuckface not Bloodhead like I had guessed before. It’s nice becasue it means a the start when the guard calls him ‘Fuckface’ he’s not being abusive, just calling him by his surname. It’s the only non-abusive act in the book. Oh, and I guess the CF thing is a Nu-Action in-joke. Cheers guys, hilarious.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand we’re back!

Apologies for the extended vacation. I can’t promise a weekly schedule but I’ll try for something a bit more regular from now on. But I missed you guys, so here we are…enjoy!

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

Andrew and Steven in

KNIGHTS OF THE REALM

Part 5

The book Dream Date by Tim Leopard and Fraser Geesin is available from Running Water Press or from Amazon.

No Star Wars was Sean Witzke’s attempt to countdown his 100 favourite films. A really wonderful series of posts. Got me thinking about all sorts of things.

Like the Coen Bros. I’m not sure I entirely agree with Sean when he posits that their films are on some level about the inexplicable. I see where he’s coming from, but that’s not how I’d choose to phrase it because inexplicability has strong connotations of the supernatural, and while the supernatural is certainly present in their films, I think they’re getting at a number of less reductive things, most obviously an epistemological gap between the world as it is and what it’s possible for people to know or understand. Historically that gap has been filled by God, supernatural agencies, etc… but as students of philosophy (as well as having a Jewish heritage, and therefore likely to have some religious issues to work through – see A Serious Man) the Coen’s will be well aware of other more down to Earth attempts to do away with the problem, hence a number of their films taking, however implicitly, less overtly fantastical views on the subject. For example, unpredictability, incompleteness of information and psychological dissonance all feature heavily in the Big Lebowski as serious obstacles to a fuller comprehension of the world, but God isn’t in the picture, although the idea of the omnipresent narrator is affectionately played with.

But to go back to Sean’s point, watching Fargo last night I was struck by the fact that, while nothing about the film seemed to require supernatural explanation, it worked hard to paint the disconnect between the characters’ worldviews and the messy, unpredictable reality they faced – an epistemological gap that manifests as a persistent incompleteness of knowledge – as in some way mysterious and sinister. The entire context of the film (a thriller) pushes for that kind of atmosphere, but the movie’s snowy landscapes and pitch black nights, with their suggestion of hidden things, and form from formlessness – echoed in the silence of the film’s most sinister killer – layer in a feeling that while the film’s events might ultimately be explicable, there is still a fantasmal otherness to them.

What’s interesting is that while Marge could discover all the salient facts, and while she demonstrates time and time again that she has the ability to assemble them in a way that makes sense and lines up with reality, even if she did so (and I guess we’re supposed to think that she will given her role as police chief), we have to wonder whether she would be left any less disturbed or perplexed? The problem here is less epistemological, in that it isn’t necessarily tied to the extent of one’s knowledge or what is knowable, and more existential, at least it is if you take the view that existentialism is more about description than factual content, which it would be hard not to do given that existentialism doesn’t deal in quantifiable facts. Looking at Fargo one is tempted to argue that the film is saying that while its plot can be *entirely* explained by mundane causal processes, and that those processes are at least potentially knowable, this point of view is in some strange, fundamental way inadequate. It fails to account for the awfulness of death and murder and the sheer bloody absurdity of it all. The why not the how. The problem is that why might not be answerable. It might not even be a proper question.

Or something.

PAGE 1: OPENING CREDITS

Question: was it Morrison’s art direction, or was Irving responsible for the decision to construct this scene out of these calming blues?

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

Andrew and Steven in

KNIGHTS OF THE REALM

Part 4

The book Dream Date by Tim Leopard and Fraser Geesin is available from Running Water Press or from Amazon.

Clint was found, after a little befuddled craning and turning while doing that exaggerated ‘I am looking for something’ look, not beside the sci-fi/movie/comic mags that the cover tries to pass itself off as, but a whole shelf over, next to the lads mags and Madgadget Monthly. Is this a local thing, slip of shelfstacker’s wrist, or deliberate placement, on WHSmiths’ no-doubt nationally co-ordinated layout plans? This seemed at first like a straight up simple mistake – word with someone in sales, get it sorted for the next issue. But after a read of the Great British boys’ comic’s best last hope… maybe not so sure.

Comics has a right to children